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Slaughterhouse Workers Were Paid to Abuse Cattle, Australian Senator Claims
August 11, 2011

Australian cattle being unloaded in Jakarta. (AFP Photo/File) Australian cattle being unloaded in Jakarta. (AFP Photo/File)
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Quinten
10:14pm Aug 12, 2011

Like PETA in America, Animals- Australia has become an organization of extremists who would do anything to justify their causes. I hope the Indonesia police will track down the driver in question and hopefully he will come out and tell the truth to the world.

Orangjkt
7:24pm Aug 12, 2011

Typical bule trickery...the bule paid indo worker to kick the cow so they can documentary film to show the world about animals right...well it backfired...australia is not the only country selling cow so the indo told them to get lost and at the end the australian bring shames to themselves and start exporting cow to indo again as their cattle industry lost billions of dollars during the cattle ban...what a shame!!

jetset24
5:36am Aug 11, 2011

Well it wasn't a phone hacking scandal...Nonetheless, the main source should be held accountable and not the driver who handed the money. Why would I not be surprised that something like this would be out in the open.


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An Australian politician claimed on Wednesday that shocking footage of animal cruelty in an Indonesian slaughterhouse was staged, reports said on Wednesday.

Liberal Senator Chris Back, who worked as a veterinarian for 40 years, said during a Senate hearing in Canberra that a worker accepted money to brutalize the cow.

Animal rights activists dismissed the allegation, which was made as a shipment of cattle prepared to leave an Australian port for Indonesia for the first time since the graphic images were shown in late May.

The footage was taken by activist group Animals Australia, which said that it went to 11 randomly selected slaughterhouses in Indonesia and filmed the cruelty. It provided the footage to ABC television’s “Four Corners,” which then sent a team of its own to film the abuse.

The screening of the “Four Corners” episode in May triggered outrage in Australia and led to a ban on cattle shipments to Indonesia until new rules were agreed to in July.

But the Australian senator said a reliable source who had visited the slaughterhouse in Sumatra where the footage was taken told him a foreign man and woman and a driver had come to the facility and offered a worker Rp 150,000 ($17) to kick the cow.

“He kicked it a number of times and then stopped,” Back said. “They asked him to keep going and he did.”

He said the worker was beaten and his wife raped in retribution for the loss of work resulting from the subsequent export ban.

But Lyn White, from Animals Australia, dismissed the allegations, describing them as very offensive. “The story you told about payment for deliberate cruelty is just so outrageous that the further suggestions that he’s been ostracized, beaten, and his wife raped should be taken in the same sense,” she told the hearing. “It simply did not occur.”

Back later said he accepted White had no knowledge of any payments but told reporters he understood the driver paid money to workers in at least two slaughterhouses “so that the footage would be obtained.”

The first shipment of cattle approved under a strict new licensing scheme was due to leave the northern port of Darwin for Indonesia on Wednesday.

Indonesia last month indicated it would import 180,000 cattle from Australia in the third quarter after Canberra lifted its live cattle export ban, and promised to audit and improve conditions at all its slaughterhouses.

Live exports, which also include sheep, were worth 1.14 billion Australian dollars ($1.18 billion) to the Australian economy last year, according to the most recent figures. Indonesia accounted for 320 million Australian dollars, making it the biggest market.

 

AFP, JG